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80 Women in the Economy (MWG-011)
than two-thirds of their workforce engaged in agriculture and allied activities. The land-ownership
pattern is extremely skewed. The majority of households are either landless or possess a very small
piece of land. Women’s participation in earning activities in this section of the population is almost
equal to men. They work either as wage labor or as household labor. Division of labor exists with
men’s and women’s activities being distinctly defined. Of course, regional variations exist. For
instance, in Bangladesh, in paddy cultivation, tasks performed in the field- like ploughing,
transplanting and harvesting - have traditionally been men’s responsibility. Women would perform
closer-to-home tasks like handling the seeds, winnowing, parboiling, and husking. A significant
number of households also engage in what is described as subsistence labor to supplement their
earnings. Most households survive at an extremely precarious equilibrium at low levels of
consumption.
Globalization has increasingly disrupted these households from their extant equilibrium. The
developed countries are interested in exporting their cheap subsidized grains to the third world. In
return they want exotic fruits, cut flowers, and other cash crops, for their agro-processing units, from
tropical countries. The Uruguay round of GATT forced the developing countries to lift barriers on
import of grains. Seed patenting is another measure, negotiated at GATT, which will disrupt the
farming practices in a bad way. Another development adversely affecting the vulnerable sections is
massive cuts in state expenditure on rural infrastructure. On the other hand, agro-processing
multinationals are directly acquiring land or subcontracting farmers to produce inputs for them.
The land use and land ownership pattern has already changed in some countries and is changing fairly
rapidly in others. Whereas medium and large farms are getting mechanized and getting integrated
into the world market and world production, the vulnerable sections have been dislodged from their
extant activities. The small and marginal farmers are surrendering their land because it is no longer
possible to fulfill subsistence needs through their resources. The incidence of landlessness is
increasing.
Women, earlier engaged as household labor, are forced to enter wage labor. For instance, in
Bangladesh, rural women who traditionally engaged themselves only in indoor agricultural tasks,
ignored the rules of seclusion and purdah and came out in large numbers to take employment in food
for work schemes during the famine in 1974. They accepted jobs requiring hard physical labor like
digging and excavation of canals for drainage and irrigation, building of roads and flood embankment.
Others joined production tasks in paddy fields. While the boundaries between men’s and women’s
work are changing, the wages paid to women are often half of that paid to men. (Kalapa gam, 1994)
Incidentally, in most places, women are preferred to men as wage laborers because their wages are
lower, and also because mechanization has taken over men’s jobs more than women’s. Even then
there is a surplus of wage labor among both males and females because employment elasticity in
agriculture reduces drastically with big capital entering the branch. In Mexico, 10 million males and
females migrate in search of work from one place to another: they are called brigades of swallows.
In other cases when farmers have not surrendered their land and cattle, men have moved out, looking
for work as agricultural wage laborers, in more prosperous regions, or into non-farm activities,
women are left to manage the non-viable farms with more constraints than men. They don’t own the
land they manage. Very often they are unable to take independent decisions. They have greater
difficulty in getting credit and other inputs.

Q3. Write about new international division of labor.
Ans. Multinational corporations have long realized that the best way to reduce the wage bill and to
enhance profits is to move parts of the production process to countries like India, Sri Lanka,
Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, etc. The cheap labor of Asian women is regarded as
the most lucrative way to enhance profits. Women in developing countries are a ‘flexible’ labor force.
Their cheaper labor forms the basis for the induction of women into export industries such as
electronics, garments, sports goods, food processing, toys, agro-industries, etc. Women are forced to
work uncomplainingly at any allotted task, however dull, laborious, physically harmful or badly paid it
may be. A large number of poor women looking for work within the narrow confines of a socially
imposed, inequitable demand for labor have become ideal workers in the international division of
labor. Globalization is riding on the back of millions of poor women and child workers in the margins
of the economy.
The relationship between the formal sector and the decentralized sector is a dependent relationship.
The formal sector has control over capital and markets, and the ‘informal’ sector works as an ancillary.
In India, more than 90% of women work in the decentralized sector, which has a high degree of labor
redundancy and obsolescence. These women have almost no control over their work and no chance for
upward mobility because of the temporary and repetitive nature of the work.